EU twisting facts to fit political agenda, chief scientist says

A big challenge for the next European Commission will be to disconnect its evidence gathering processes from the “political imperative” that’s driving policy proposals, according to Anne Glover, the EU’s chief scientific advisor.

Speaking before the EU elections last week, Glover reflected upon her role, which was introduced by the outgoing President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso.

Glover was appointed in December 2011 to provide the President of the EU Executive with first-class independent scientific advice. A trained biologist who holds a chair in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Aberdeen, she previously served a as chief scientific advisor for Scotland (2006-2011).

More than two years into her job, she seems to have learned a great deal about the internal working of the EU’s flagship institution.

And her assessment of what goes on inside the Commission’s walls is not rosy.

Commissioners with ‘crazy ideas’

“When I spoke to president Barroso about taking up this role, I said to him that for me it would only be attractive if I was regarded as an independent chief scientific advisor,” Glover told a briefing organised on 21 May by Eurochambres, the Association of European Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

“What I said to him was that, for me to have any value or credibility, I need to focus on evidence and not on political considerations,” she recalled.

Describing her role at the Commission, Glover said she enjoyed considerable freedom in providing scientific advice to Barroso. Although her opinions remain confidential, she has made widely-publicised comments on subjects as diverse – and controversial – as climate change, GMOs or shale gas.

But it appears she also found it difficult to disentangle the Commission’s evidence gathering processes from what she calls the “political imperative” that’s behind them. Illustrating her point, she used a fictitious example:

“Let’s imagine a Commissioner over the weekend thinks, ‘Let’s ban the use of credit cards in the EU because credit cards lead to personal debt’. So that commissioner will come in on Monday morning and say to his or her Director General, ‘Find me the evidence that demonstrates that this is the case.’”

The Commissioner’s staff might resist the idea but in the end, she says, “they will do exactly what they’re asked” and “find the evidence” to show that credit card use leads to personal debt, even though this may not be the case in reality.

“So you can see where this is going,” Glover said: “You’re building up an evidence base which is not really the best.”

Biased evidence

To back its policy proposals, the Commission often outsources the evidence-gathering part of the job to external consulting firms, which provide ‘impact assessment studies’ or ‘research’ that are often branded as ‘independent’.

However, Glover says such consultancies have little incentive to produce evidence that contradicts the Commission’s political agenda.

“If they want repeat business, [they] are not going to go out and find the evidence to show that this is a crazy idea,” she says.

To be fair, the Commission is not alone in trying to distort facts, Glover said. The same goes for the other two EU institutions – the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers, which represents the 28 EU member states.

“What happens at the moment – whether it’s in Commission, Parliament or Council – is that time and time again, if people don’t like what’s being proposed, what they say is that there is something wrong with the evidence. So everybody blames the evidence and nobody is honest about the fact that in many cases, understanding the evidence is the best possible platform to make the logical extension into policy. But they don’t like it so they say ‘We need more evidence’. And of course scientists can always produce more evidence.”

In fact, the battle over evidence extends far beyond the EU institutions and spills over to the private sector and non-governmental groups trying to influence policy, sometimes with the backing of EU member countries.

Perhaps the most politicised to date was the REACH regulation on chemicals, which gave rise to one of the most epic lobbying battles in the EU’s history, generating dozens of impact assessment studies before it was eventually adopted in 2006.

To Glover, such drawn-out battles over the evidence on which policy decisions are grounded should become a thing of the past.

“What I am going to propose for the next President of the European Commission is to try and develop a new system of evidence gathering within the Commission that entirely disconnects evidence gathering with the political imperative,” Glover said.

According to Glover, a simple solution would be to create a special department at the Commission whose role would be to assess policy proposals against the evidence – “a central service which would be the evidence portal,” she says.

The service would take “questions” submitted to it by the Commission directorates and bring together the evidence to substantiate the issue at hand. Once formulated, the evidence base would be sent back to the policymakers who can then look at policy options based on the analysis.

And if the policymakers choose to adopt a policy that goes against the evidence, that’s OK, Glover says because other considerations – social, economic, ethical, philosophical – might be more important. “And I think that’s quite justifiable,” she says.

Crucially, Glover says transparency in the evidence-gathering process would be key, so that every stakeholder – whether a citizen, a business, a politician, a scientist – can look at the reasoning that’s behind policy proposals. “And that is all doable, it is not a fantasy. It would be quite easy to achieve,” she says.

The Commission does have an impact assessment board, launched after the adoption of the contested REACH regulation, which brings together the bosses of all the main Commission directorates.

But Glover says its composition should be revised. “We should look at impact assessment in the Commission and try and make that more transparent and easier to implement,” she said.

“At the moment there is no scientist on the impact assessment board. I think there is an opportunity there.”

Background

Professor Anne Glover was appointed in December 2011 as the chief scientific advisor to José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President.

A trained biologist who holds a chair in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Aberdeen, she previously served a as chief scientific advisor for Scotland (2006-2011).

Under Glover’s watch, the Commission set up a special advisory group to provide the EU executive with independent information and advice on an array of scientific and technology issues.

The group aims to help the Commission deal with political minefields such as genetically modified crops, biofuels and shale gas.

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Comments

OK, so the EU’s chief scientific advisor is monitoring what the EU says and does in relation to her advice and other scientific data, claiming that the “EU is twisting facts to fit political agendas”. But who is monitoring the chief scientific advisor’s advice, after all if her advice to president Barroso remains confidential it is not being (peer) reviewed either. What we need is an open dialogue from everyone, otherwise how do we know that there are no agendas, and if so by whom – this is not just a problem of politicains, the scientific community is not beyond having their own agendas either, even more so when research grants etc. depend on there being a ‘crisis’.

Her advice is confidential, there is no reason why the internal org that she is proposing could not make its evidence gathering public and publish the evidence that it gathers. I think you need to read the article more carefully.

In the case of “the scientific community is not beyond having their own agendas either” instead of making an assertion perhaps you would care to back this up with some examples.

The so-called scientific community is rife with their own agendas. It’s almost so bad that it’s more like a religious community. Consider for example, the physics community. The so-called standard model, the big bang theory and supersymmetry have so little evidence backing it up it’s laughable. Consider that these models are full of mathematical abstractions (i.e. zero-dimensional particles, one-dimensional strings, two-dimensional spacetime ribbon-tape, and curved space-time) that have no basis is reality and that are utterly useless in explaining anything. But hundreds of thousands if not millions of scientists the world over cling to these fantasies because they know that if the con is discovered, the billions that they get in funding would dry up overnight.

Or even more to the point (and to which the EU chief scientist is equally clueless about), GMOs. It’s been known for more than 100 years how to quickly grow nutrient rich sustainable food for more than 100 years since Dr. Julius Hensel discovered based on theoretical chemical considerations, and supported by practical tests, that powdered rock fertilisation especially from (granite, a primordial rock which contains the many trace minerals that meet all needs of plant nutrition) can replace not only chemical fertilizers but all animal ones as well. In fact, when it is used, the plants grow quicker, stronger, larger and free of diseases! What it showed is that just as in humans, if a species has all the required nutrients for cellular renewal and is free of toxins, that it will remain healthy. This was further reinforced by the work of Dr. Maynard Murray in the 1940s and 1950s who using sea solids (from areas where there is a rich mixture of sea life) that again, the plants grew quicker, stronger larger and free of disease than conventionally grown plants. Again the key in both cases is that the soil has all of the nutrients needed for the plant to take up to remain healthy and grow quickly. So the question that begs to be asked is what problem does GMO solve? It doesn’t solve anything. In fact it is BECAUSE of the use of chemical fertiliser that does the following: 1. It poisons the soil, destroying beneficial soil bacteria, earthworms and humus; 2. It creates unhealthy, unbalanced, mineral-deficient plants, lacking resistance to disease and insect pests, thus leading to the use of pesticides in an effort to preserve these defective specimens; 3. It leads to diseases among animals and men who feed on these abnormal plants and their products; 4. It leads to a increase expenses for the farmer, because chemical fertilizers, being extremely soluble, are quickly washed from the soil by rainfall and needs constant replacement. So GMOs are trying to compensate for these problems by creating unnatural combinations of genes to address the problems created by this. And by doing that based on INDEPENDENT research, we see that it has disastrous consequences it has on animals and humans. Even beyond that, the copious use of glyphosate has major health consequences since as a chelate it binds to and robs the plants of nutrients. And note that she is the Chief Scientist. So imagine how bad the others must be!

Mike, do yourself a favour, go look up the UEA email scandal. If there wasn’t anything to hide and if such data was public domain by default then there would have been no problem and nothing would have been hidden, nothing could have been implied or exposed by such a hack, nor could there be the possibility of the “twisting of facts” from anyone, hacker, politician or scientist.

Since few results on anything represent the absolute “truth” and few real scientists would say “only these results are the 100% true ones” I suspect that everyone in any position of responsibility has to be selective to a certain degree in deciding which results to base policy on. National goverments are even more selective than the European Commission.

At least the Commission, when deciding what policies to propose on issues such as the safety of nanoparticles, the impact of biofuel crops over food prices or chemical substances with hormone-disrupting effects is attempting to pursue policy that reflects the wishes of European citizens.

Outside of mathematics where proofs are by definition truth, one enters the realm of probabilities & statistics. But even there one can reach high levels of certainty.

As the lady noted: one can base policy on criteria other than evidence (scientific or otherwise). But in doing so one needs to be clear on the “why” (why does policy diverge from evidence that should for the most part be objective – otherwise why have it?).

I’d also suggest that the vast majority of EU citizens are too lazy/too busy/too poorly informed/too… to take much of an interest in many/most aspects of EU policy development. I’d extend this comment to many MEPs ([particularly the latest crop).

The EC/EP have been at it for years – in 1994 they decided to “harmonise” the electricity supply voltage across the EU.
Politics took precedence over the Laws of Physics, they ignored qualified engineers, and took no notice of the electical supply, distribution and manufacturing industries.
In the end the voltage in every single country remained unchanged, but to meet the political agenda the allowable tolerances on voltage were widened, so that everyone was at a nominal 230V. In other words they degraded the specification to suit their political vision.
A completely factual, traceable and documented example of “EU twisting facts to fit political agenda, chief scientist says”
That’s the way to do it!

Engineers can be “consultants” – stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

The legislation was associated with the single market (much beloved by Thatcherites) – and enabled elec’ appliances to be sold across the EU. Not a big deal & it has changed very little wrt power networks.

It’s a bit rich for the Chief Scientist to accuse the Commission of twisting “the facts” to suit a political agenda, and of ignoring science in pursuit of political objectives. Well, that’s what politicians do. Because a scientist thinks something or is capable of doing something, that is no reason why the politicians should simply fall into line and facilitate scientific objectives. They have — quite rightly — other priorities, such as the protection of public health and the environment. Talking of politics, this is a straightforward political pitch from Anne Glover herself, carefully timed and designed to flag up her own desire for more power. So she wants a sort of central unit which would be an “evidence portal”?? If that happens, God help us all, because she seems to have only the fuzziest idea of what constitutes “evidence”. Evidence appears to be exactly what she wants it to be, and anything inconvenient to her view of any particular scientific issue is simply not deemed to be evidence. I have criticised her heavily for her partial and heavily biased view of what constitutes “evidence” in the matter of GMO safety, and in spite of abundant (and growing) evidence in the peer-reviewed literature of real harm associated directly and indirectly with GMOs, she seems to exist in a state of denial. See this:http://www.gmfreecymru.org/documents/gloverisms.html
That sort of dogged adherence to a piece of dogma does not auger well for the future of her office. Like too many other senior scientists, she demonstrates all too clearly that she wants to establish a “scientific orthodoxy” which will be flagged up to politicians and the public as “the truth” — and which, I suppose, is part of a great plan to place science at the centre of things. Chief Scientists and scientific academies will sit in judgment, and pontificate. Fine in theory, but that is not how science works, and it is plain stupid to pretend that it does. Science is a messy old business, full of uncertainties, contradictions and disputes — which is exactly as it should be.
Any scientist worth his / her salt knows that Popper was right when he said that the only valid scientific purpose was refutation or falsification, on the basis that no hypothesis can ever be proved to be totally correct or truthful. Why pretend otherwise? It does no service to science or to scientists to pretend that the scientific establishment is uniquely in possession of a sort of scientific truth that politicians must ignore at their peril. If Anne Glover does not accept that scientific uncertainty is something we must accept and admit to, she would be better off in some other job.

Fascinating to see the noxious troll. Brian John, continue his unhealthy obsession with EU’s Chief Scientific Adviser. In an effort to gain an unlikely level of credibility, John promotes himself as a “respected member of the scientific community”. He is, in fact, a self publishing author of children’s fantasy. This will have been evident to most from the tenor of his rancid contribution, which is tediously familiar. Let us all hope that he finds a place of peace and safety in the near future where he can continue his works of fantasy without causing undue harm to others.

Mr Forth, unless you care to cite some proof might I suggest you leave out the accusations of trolling, your personal attack is unwarranted and is noxious in its self.

You also miss the real problem, the fact that for so many scientists being financed by/or advising either or both national governments and the EU they can make claims etc. but then hide so much of the _RAW_ data used to reach their conclusions, thus all but preventing proper peer review and this is what breeds the counter claims.

Ah — the knight in shining armour rides forth, as I knew he would. Don, kindly check my academic record — it’s not difficult, with Google. I hold an Oxford University doctorate and have published scores of academic papers as well as several university texts. I have published about 80 books, one of which is a small children’s book, which you will find on Amazon at a very reasonable price. You are welcome to buy it, since I need the income. Now — kindly stop your noxious trolling and address the real issues.

Whilst you Brian should stop using biased citations to back up your comments, http://www.gmfreecymru.org/ is hardly going to give a balanced opinion are they, after all they have rafter nailed their opinions to the mast in the choice of their domain name!